It is a widely held belief that the skill of hitting a baseball is one of the most difficult skills in sports to master. It is also held it is one of the most difficult to practice.
In a traditional batting practice, distractions arise that inhibit the ability of the batter to concentrate on the fundamental techniques that are the foundation for the development of proper batting procedures and skills. Even the distraction of attempting to make contact with a ball can present a learning problem. In an effort to attain momentary satisfaction, the tendency, especially among young batters, is to forgo form, techniques and discipline and just try to smack the ball. Some other difficulties and distractions in conventional batting practice are the inability of the pitcher to throw strikes, the delays of ball retrieval, the lack of time for ample quality swings, the fear of being hit by a pitched ball, adverse weather conditions, and limited available space especially if practice is indoors. These factors, as well as others, have contributed to a lack of means and opportunity for quality learning time in batting practice. Many batting-practice sessions could, in fact, be called bad-habit practice.
The advent of many types of mechanical pitching machines and stationary batting tees helped address some of the difficulties but, at best, they give limited batting experiences and need either significant space or extensive and expensive screening and netting arrangements. Electronic attempts to simulate the batting experience, such as "Apparatus for Baseball Batting Practice," D'Ambrosio, U.S. Pat. No. 4,708,343; "Electric Baseball Batting Game," Trzeniewski, U.S. Pat. No. 3,531,116; and "Method and Apparatus for Improving the Performance of a Batter," Stewart, U.S. Pat. No. 4,461,477 also helped address some of the difficulties but, due to the nature of these apparatus, they inherently lack the ability to simulate a situation whereby the batter can realistically experience the path, speed, movement, placement and visual perception of an actually pitched ball traveling from the pitcher's release point to the bat-ball contact point at home plate, thereby encouraging the batter to employ the necessary head, eye and body movements so vital to batting success. These devices are also very technical, complicated and expensive.
What is needed is a device that directs the emphasis away from actual ball contact, but instead directs the focus on the many elements of desirable batting techniques so difficult for many batters to master.